Those plastic tabs that come on many locos are absolutely useless. Underneath those, the decoders and boards that use them usually have a hole in the board, stick the wire through there and solder it in place. If you need something to disconnect, various suppliers have tiny 2-pin connectors which pull apart to disconnect the wires. You can also make up your own, look for a machined-pin IC socket - it MUST be machined, the description will say so. The sockets on those are round, not square like a basic tin-plated socket. The trick here is that the pins where you'd solder the socker to the board also fit nicely into the hole on top where the legs of the IC would plug in. So you can cut the sockets apart (the frame is only plastic) into sections and use those as connectors. On one side, the wires solder into the holes, on the other, they solder onto the pins. Plus the pins intot he holes and you have a connection. Use shrink tape to insulate the connections, especially on the pin end. Obviously the tube has to be slid ontot he wire before soldering the connection.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
actuly i am replacing two of my sd70ace with soundtraxx tsunimi decoders and new speakers. i was watching video on how i go about doing this and look simple. now in past i had issues with speaker wires becoming loose and disconnectiong from speaker when putting back on shell then i have to solder it back together. i figer there some insulation stuff to cover the wire connection pad so it dosen't happen. dose anyone know the stuff to use?
www.soundtraxx.com
nevermind i found out